Wild images of Martian meteorites Lead to Information About Mars’s Ancient Surface and Atmosphere

Billions of years ago, a large asteroid hit mars and ejected large amounts of surface material into space. Some of the surface material traveled through space and made its way to earth and fell in Antarctica. Brave meteorite hunters found the Martian rock and delivered to me. I then looked at the rock under a microscope and took the cool pictures you see!

“Are those fossils of a piranha, a dragon, or an alien”? This may be the first question to pop into your mind! Your second question may be, “wait was there life on Mars”? Unfortunately, the answer to both questions is no. The images are pictures of skeletal minerals that are hosted within the Martian rock.

Although, the cool photos fail at answering the question of life on Mars, they do provide us with valuable information about how the surface of Mars interacted with the element sulfur in its atmosphere. Prior to studying the images, I measured the isotopes of sulfur. What are isotopes of sulfur? Well, sulfur can be thought of as having a personality disorder. At any given time, sulfur flaunts 4 stable personalities (aka isotopes) and depending on the activity its participating in during its lifetime, it will show different amounts of each of the 4 personalities. The personality (isotope) measurement of sulfur in this martian rock revealed that the sulfur must have been ripped apart from its original molecule by UV rays while living in the martian atmosphere. By studying the cool photos, I can get a better idea of what happened to the sulfur after it was ripped apart from it original molecule that allowed for the sulfur to make its way into the martian rock.



I made the following educated guess as to what happened to that sulfur:  After the sun ripped a bunch of sulfur molecules apart, the sulfur to fell onto the surface of mars. A volcano erupted, spewing lava over the surface, allowing the lava to capture and incorporate the sulfur into the flow (a process called "assimilation"). The lava cooled and became rock. An was then ejected off of the surface and into space by a large impact.

I was able to use a microscope with a camera to take really zoomed in pictures of the Martian meteorite and load the images into a computer program that is able to detect small differences in color (or brightness) within the image. The colors of interest in these images are the dull light/tan/gold color of the “fossil looking minerals” (highlighted in green as 'magnetite') and the really tiny bright gold/yellow specs which are the sulfur minerals (highlighted in red as 'sulfide'). A proposed chemical reaction involving sulfur's interaction with the surface suggested that we should expect a certain amount of “fossil looking minerals” to sulfur minerals. The computer software calculated the amount of “fossil looking minerals” and sulfur minerals in terms of brightness and confirmed that the hypothesis was indeed correct! Thank you for reading!

Me calculating sulfide to magnetite ratios in order to test hypothesis